


The Duchess & The Highwayman

by kmo



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Also a gentleman highwayman, Alternate Universe - Regency, F/M, Hannibal is a Cannibal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2017-09-23
Packaged: 2019-01-04 13:57:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12170262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kmo/pseuds/kmo
Summary: Duchess Du Maurier makes a startling discovery about the identity of the infamous Lancashire Ripper.





	The Duchess & The Highwayman

**Author's Note:**

> This originally started as a tumblr ficlet prompt for bedannibal Regency AU. You can find the original in my ficlet collection, but I've pasted it here as a prologue. I decided to expand on it for the electric-couple challenge. Also because I am Regency trash.

_Prologue_

 

The heart in Duchess Du Maurier’s breast pounded like a dove caught in a cage. She could hear screams and sobs from outside her carriage, followed at last by a sickening silence, as the Lancashire Ripper slaughtered her footmen one by one. With a crack, the door of her carriage was thrown open. The Duchess refused to cower before so loathsome a man. She alighted as if she were on her way to a Mayfair ball, instead of her own execution.

One of the highwayman’s arms grabbed her firmly about the waist, while the other plucked the large sapphire bauble from her neck. His hand caressed the bare skin of her décolletage, raised to goose flesh in the cool night air. His touch hinted that her jewels might not be his true prize. Would he ravish her before he murdered her?

She forced herself to look at him squarely, chin raised and defiant. In that moment, the full moon appeared from behind the clouds, illuminating the Ripper’s face. He wore a crimson domino half mask to hide his features, but those eyes…deep and dark as a doe’s. She had looked into those eyes a hundred times–amused as they went riding together in Fells Park, forlorn at the loss of his sister, even flashing in anger at a guest’s perceived rudeness. The hands that held her so brutally now had once tenderly led her through a quadrille, had penned the most charming letters.

The Duchess laid a hand on the highwayman’s cheek and stroked his mask gently with her thumb. “Lord Lecter, is it really you?”

*

Instead of the quick and gruesome death she had anticipated, Lord Lecter had placed her upon his coal black steed and swung himself up behind her. He held her tight to him as they sped off into the night, quicker than a thunderclap. Despite the chill in the air, Bedelia felt a warm, almost burning heat from Lord Lecter’s body. Nerves, most likely, from being abducted by the infamous Lancashire Ripper.

They did not utter a word to one another until they had tucked themselves away in the coziness of Lord Lecter’s study at Ravenstag Hall.

He poured them both two generous glasses of French brandy from his special reserve—in short supply since the war—and Bedelia found herself gulping at hers in a most unladylike fashion. Her companion, she noticed, did the same and kept his back turned to her, peering out the window at the moonlit garden. He exhibited an unease she neither associated with her longtime friend’s graceful manners nor with the Ripper’s brazen swagger. Unease perhaps at being unmasked at last. And she had not even needed to remove his disguise to do so.

The brandy calmed her nerves and lit a quiet spark of courage in her belly. “What is to happen to me?” she asked at last, half-dreading the answer.

“I cannot allow you to share what you know, Duchess. Nor, do I have any wish to harm you. Yet, I have no way of securing your silence. You see my dilemma,” he said in a darkly matter-of-fact tone.

“We have known each other for years, shared one another’s confidences. Is not my word of honor enough?”

“No, I am afraid in this case it is not.” He swallowed down the rest of his brandy and joined her on the wine-colored davenport. When he looked at her, his dark eyes held a vulnerable resolve. “There is perhaps one possible solution.”

Bedelia felt herself nearly faint with anticipation. Her corset was laced too tight, it squeezed her lungs, making it hard for her to steady herself and breathe. “Such as?”

Lord Lecter took her left hand and held it with the upmost tenderness, firm palm pressing against her delicate fingers. He looked deeply into her eyes and said with great sincerity, “Marry me.”

Bedelia nearly felt the wind go out of her, leaving her breathless and stunned, not unlike the sensation of falling from one’s horse. “Marry you?”

“You would live with me here at Ravenstag Hall. It would help me to trust that you are not speaking to Colonel Crawford or any of the other magistrates. And as my wife, any court would be likely to disregard your testimony anyway,” he explained.

Bedelia snatched back her hand, irritated at the reminder of how the laws of the land treated married women. “Am I to be your wife or your prisoner here?”

“My wife,” he said. “Though I suppose that would be entirely dependent on you.”

Bedelia rose and went to stand by the window, eager to put some space between herself and her host. A man she had always considered her dearest and closest friend, but who now sought to cage her if not murder her. “You present me with an impossible choice—marry you or have you kill me. My freedom or my life.”

He rose and drew himself up to his impressive height, but did not advance on the corner to which she had retreated. “It is not coercion, Duchess. Mere persuasion.”

Marrying again for a woman like herself was unthinkable, like asking a hawk to return to a gilded cage. The role of wife had stifled her even as a young bride—she guarded her liberty as one of England’s wealthiest widows as a dragon did his horde. And if on some nights when the halls of her home seemed especially empty and her bed frigid with cold she might have wished for some companion, she had concluded that loneliness was a small price to pay for freedom.

“Why me?” she asked in exasperation. “I am too old to give you heirs. A prudent man like yourself should be mindful of his legacy. I would have thought someone like Miss Bloom would be a much more suitable choice.” Certainly, half the county knew Miss Bloom had set her cap for Lord Lecter; the girl had fawned and simpered over him at every garden party and musicale for the past two seasons.

Two, she realized, could play at persuasion.

“My ward, Abigail, shall get the bulk of my estate. My legacy is not in my title alone, Duchess,” he said with a wolfish grin that sent shivers down her spine. Yes, the Ripper would haunt the Lancashire countryside for decades to come in ballads and broadsides and harrowing tales told by the winter fireside in every tavern and coaching inn. “Besides,” he added, stepping closer, “Miss Bloom is not you.”

His words were so tender, his regard so fond, his charm—it tugged at her like a current, warm and inviting. It called to mind the many hours they had spent in each other’s company since he had moved to the county seven years before. She had always looked forward to Lord Lecter’s weekly visits to Fells Park, afternoons spent deep in conversation in her library about Plato and Aristotle and the workings of the human mind. Knowing her curiosity about anatomy and physiology, he had brought her books and treatises from the best medical men in Edinburgh, books most men considered inappropriate reading material for a lady. And if Lord Lecter’s conversation sparked a fire in her mind, his form in his tight breeches as they rode together, his hands on her waist as he helped her alight from her horse, sparked something else entirely.

It all swirled together in her breast—fondness and betrayal and fear and lust—until she blurted out, tears in her eyes, “You could have asked me to marry you any time you wished. But instead you do so now, under such…dreadful…circumstances.”

“You are infamous throughout the county, my dear Duchess, for turning down every man who has ever proposed to you. I believe you have refused Squire Chilton no less than six times, not that I blame you,” he said with a wry, private smile. “If I had asked, would you have said yes?”

His assessment of her rang true. Tears again pooled in her eyes as she choked on some kind of unfamiliar emotion. She felt like a debutante in her first season, unsteady and uncertain, though she had not seen that girl’s visage in the mirror for twenty years. “Perhaps. I don’t know.”

He shook his head, knowing she is lying. “I have never taken a wife because I did not wish to live a lie, to have to hide my true self from she I cherished most. I would not have a bride who could not see me.” His expression turned fervent, and something flickered behind his eyes. “But you saw me tonight, out there on the road.”

He stepped closer, wrapping his hand about her waist, enveloping her tiny silken frame in his large one. His clothes were still the dark rough great coat and leather breeches of the Ripper, not the fine silks and linen of the lord. He smelled of sweat and blood and the dirt of the post road; it tingled something inside of her more than his imported Parisian colognes ever had. Her heart thundered in her chest, making her keenly aware of the blood pulsing in her neck and the flush spreading across her décolletage. He bent down to whisper, breath hot and insistent in her ear; “Marry me.”

“Yes,” she answers. She does not know whether it is her self-preservation or insatiable curiosity that his persuasion has appealed to more.

He smiled at her and swiftly bent to capture her lips in a kiss so scorching it burnt her all the way to the bone. They may have been in the home of the well-mannered Lord Lecter, but the kiss belonged to the highwayman known as the Ripper, she thought, the one who had nearly ravished her by moonlight.

**Author's Note:**

> I do plan to occasionally write ficlets in this 'verse from time to time when I can. But I consider it more like a ficlet 'verse than a true wip. So watch this space!


End file.
